History of The Original CZ World Championships

Don Matthews

Don Matthews never met a CZ he didn't like. When he passed in 2014, we revived the CZ World Championships in his name. DMCZWC legitimized the CZ World Championships for the first time by making the other countries from around the world, by creating the CZech-Motorpool. They are an American group of CZ enthusiasts that sponsor "fly-in" competitors on the U.S. based CZs.

CZ pioneers honored

While we have all these CZ people together, we decided to team up with DIRT ILLUSTRATED Magazine and honor people who, through their personal sacrifice, opened CZ shops so we could have a place to buy CZs. This is something we will continue to do each year and expand on it to include people who made history on CZs.

What we've accomplished!

2014

We revived the CZ World Championships that had laid dormant for several years...
With 37 entries on 17 CZs and a lot of love, we made Sue Matthews smile for the first time since Don passed...
We set the bar for having the best trophies in Vintage Motocross...

2015

We innovated the CZ Bike Show, making it chronological...
We started the Missing Man Fly Over for Don with the help of Harold Koehler and the Cheap Suits Flying Club...
Brad Lackey created an event shirt, then came and sold his shirts...
Ex-CZ factory rider Gary Chaplin came and was Co-Guest of Honor with Women's Motocross legend, Lori Payne...

2016

We expanded the event to two days, Day One being the show of CZs in the morning and 4 hour practice in the afternoon...
We went International with riders from France, Italy, North Ireland, Normandy and Czech Republic sponsored on American based-CZs, creating friendships that wrap the globe...
We got Rex Staten back into racing Motocross...
We found the 1975 Carlsbad USGP Harry Klemm-built CZ 400 and got it to the event where Rex rode...
We hired AMA Hall of Fame announcer Larry Huffman to be our Grand Marshall and Master of ceremonies for the event and to be part of the 1975 USGP reunion...
We managed to entice Harry Klemm to join Rex, Larry and the bike to reunite 4 key elements of that day, when a kid from So CAL, on a home-built CZ, put it to the European factory stars at Carlsbad in 1975...
We all got together and flew Ken Smith of VMX magazine in from Australia. We also invited Brian Catterson of CYCLE WORLD magazine to come race a sponsored CZ 400...
We started giving LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS to CZ shop owners and special individuals who were there for the CZ marque when it made a difference...

2017

2017 became "Year of the Woman" for the first time in CZWC history, as we had a Woman's CZ World Champion!
The Girl Scouts were our color Guard...
We expanded the event to three days, Day One highlighted by a motocross school from Czech-Republic Motocross and I.S.D.T. Champions Martin Zarava and Jiri Stodulka...
Due to flooding in Marysville, we changed the venue to Prairie City, home of the HANGTOWN NATIONAL outdoor Professional AMA motocross race...
We created the HARRY TAYLOR CUP, the World Motocross Championships for HODAKAs, with race teams from all over the mid-west and the west coast participating...
We got Brad Lackey, Jiri Stodulka, Jim Wilson, Gary Chaplin, Rex Staten, Lori Payne, John DeSoto, Danny Turner, Patrick Paintendre and Jim Stein all on the track again for the Legends Race, with Larry Huffman calling it from the press box...
We got T.J. Noto from "City Bike Magazine" to race his first ever motocross. TJ is a past AFM road racer with lots of trail riding experience. We had him take the motocross school on Friday and attend practice on Saturday. Then on Sunday, we turned him loose on a Kevin Peltz championship-winning CZ 400, prepped by Mark Alcorn. We wanted TJ to have the total experience and race with the best in the world so we injected him into the CZ-only International Trans-Am 500cc class. His story comes out the end of May 2017 in CITY BIKE...
We got together and brought Ken Smith and Larry Huffman back...
We started the HANGTOWN MOTOCROSS HISTORY display put on by Kevin Bridges of the DIRT DIGGERS NORTH, featuring Jim Pomeroy's OPTACO bike...
Sponsors came forward from the motorcycle industry and put up thousands of dollars in real, tangible prizes for the riders...
We did not raffle items off; all the prizes were just that, PRIZES that went straight to the riders...

Written by Robin Hannah